Rudolf Schirmer

Rudolf Schirmer ( born March 10, 1831 in Greifswald, † January 27, 1896 in Greifswald ) was a German ophthalmologist, a professor at the University of Greifswald, and the founder and first director of the university eye clinic.

Rudolf Schirmer was the son of Greifswald Consistorial and superintendents Professor August Schirmer ( 1791-1863 ). His brother Johann Theodor Schirmer (1827-1904) was professor of law in Königsberg.

Rudolf Schirmer attended high school in Greifswald, joined the school in Schulpforta, where he took his matriculation examination from. He then studied medicine in Göttingen, Greifswald, Vienna, Paris and Berlin. He was a student of Albrecht von Graefe ( 1828-1870 ). After his doctorate, he completed his habilitation in 1860 in Berlin. He then founded the ophthalmologic teaching at the University of Greifswald. After he gradually regular supply of eye patients in the surgical clinic had developed and expanded since 1871, the newly built eye clinic was opened under his direction in 1887, which he directed until 1893.

Rudolf Schirmer married on September 15, 1863 Emma Planck ( 1844-1894 ), a half-sister of Max Planck. Because of its increasing myopiebedingter visual blurring joined in 1893 by his son Otto Schirmer at the Eye Clinic of Greifswald, and in 1896 took over the chair of ophthalmology at the University of Greifswald. 1896 Rudolf Schirmer died from influenza pneumonia. His grandson Herbert Peiper was professor of surgery at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz.

The establishment of ophthalmology as an independent subject, works on refraction and Akkommodationsanomalien as well as diseases of the lacrimal apparatus are among his most important achievements.

Scientific Publications

• A case of telangiectasia. Archives of Ophthalmology, Berlin 1860, pp. 119-121. (online)
• The doctrine of refraction and Accommodations disorders of the eye - for physicians and students. Hirschwald, Berlin, 1866.